tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329600504016968888.post8221232245138043062..comments2024-03-29T04:31:15.219-05:00Comments on Pastoral Meanderings: Losing our language. . . losing our identity. . .Pastor Petershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10653554256101480140noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329600504016968888.post-91633653482646575502015-09-11T19:38:36.054-05:002015-09-11T19:38:36.054-05:00I was working out of town last Sunday and looked f...I was working out of town last Sunday and looked for an LCMS congregation to attend. I found one with a website saying "we use the liturgy" and it hyperlinked litugical terms from the Synod website. When I got there it was a praise band and wall screens. I was quite upset.Timothy C. Schenkshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11770741345144496175noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329600504016968888.post-79940340902188986432015-09-08T15:35:55.315-05:002015-09-08T15:35:55.315-05:00Once again, user-friendliness backfires. Using mo...Once again, user-friendliness backfires. Using modern Bible versions reading like the Enquirer doesn't help Mater Ecclesiae's cause, either.Kirk Skeptichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06142889734004402296noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329600504016968888.post-42402174068342134442015-09-08T11:37:06.368-05:002015-09-08T11:37:06.368-05:00"Furthermore, our vocabulary regarding call, ...<i>"Furthermore, our vocabulary regarding call, ordination, and the authority of the pastoral office in relationship to the royal priesthood of believers has become obscured and troubled."</i><br /><br />The vocabulary of Walther's Thesis VI on the Ministry in <i>Die Stimme unserer Kirche in der Frage von Kirche und Amt</i> seems unobscured in either the original German or the various translations such as those of J.T. Mueller and M.C. Harrison:<br /><br /><i>"Das Predigtamt wird von Gott durche die Gemeinde, als Inhaberin aller Kirchengewalt oder der Schlüssel, und durch deren von Gott vorgeschriebenen Beruf übertragen. Ordination der Berufenen mit Handauflegung ist nicht göttlicher Einsegung, sondern eine apostolische kirchliche Ordnung, und nur eine öffentliche seierliche Bestätigung jenes Berufes."</i><br /><br /><b>Mueller</b>: The ministry of the Word [<i>Predigtamt</i>] is conferred by God through the congregations as the possessor of all ecclesiastical power, or the power of the keys, by means of its call, which God Himself has prescribed. B. The ordination of the called [<i>persons</i>] with the laying on of hands is not a divine institution but merely an ecclesiastical rite [<i>Ordnung</i>] established by the apostles; it is no more than a solemn public confirmation of the call. <br /><br /><b>Harrison</b>: The preaching office [<i>Predigtamt</i>] is conferred [<i>übertragen</i>] by God through the congregation [<i>Gemeinden</i>] as the possessor [<i>Inhaberin</i>] of all ecclesiastical authority [<i>Kirchengewalt</i>], or the power of the keys, by means of its call, which God Himself has prescribed. B. The ordination of those men called by the laying on of hands [<i>Handauflegung</i>] is not a divine institution, but rather an apostolic, ecclesiastical rite [<i>Ordnung</i>], and only a solemn public confirmation [<i>Bestätigung</i>] of that call.<br /><br />Of course, the word, <i>übertragen</i>, occasionally gets stuck in some people's throats.<br /><br />The vocabulary in J.T. Mueller's section on the Doctrine of the Public Ministry (pp. 563-584) or on the Doctrine of the Christian Church (pp. 541-562) in his <i>Christian Dogmatics</i> (1934), also is unobscured and nontroubling, as the subtitle for the book suggests: <i>A Handbook of Doctrinal Theology for Pastors Teachers and Laymen</i>.Carl Vehsehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00348831096001668813noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329600504016968888.post-37169756495641971052015-09-08T10:23:27.152-05:002015-09-08T10:23:27.152-05:00Quotation from Kenneth Korby:
We have difficulty ...Quotation from Kenneth Korby:<br /><br />We have difficulty with language, furthermore, because the language we have inherited was different from the one we now use, and we have not spent that much time learning to know the language of the past before we discard it. Furthermore, our vocabulary regarding call, ordination, and the authority of the pastoral office in relationship to the royal priesthood of believers has become obscured and troubled. We are suffering confusion to a great extent because of the loss of our common spiritual and theological language. The language of pastoral theology and the care of souls is predominantly the language of the personality and social sciences. We are becoming poorer and poorer. Similarly, much of the language of piety has been taken over by the language of baptistified charismatics. The language of the catechism, of hymnody, of the liturgy, and of Bible translations is in such flux that fewer and fewer learn it by heart.<br /><br />Kenneth F. Korby. “The Pastoral Office and the Priesthood of Believers” in Lord Jesus Christ, Will You Not Stay: Essays in Honor of Ronald Feuerhahn on the Occasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday. Edited by J. Bart Day, Jon D. Vieker et al. (Houston, Texas: The Feuerhahn Festschrift Committee, 2002); pp.333,334<br /><br /><br />To speak of the church is necessarily to speak of institution and organization. But makes a whale of a difference which images you are using when you say organization. If one speaks with the image of a religious IBM with its international headquarters, it is not far to consider of individual units as franchises to distribute whatever the central headquarters designs or sells. Such franchises are known as the grass roots. What a strange grid to lay over the holy church. Can you imagine what a picture is conjured up when nurturing the church is thought of as fertilizing the grass roots?<br />Korby, p.337 (Feuerhahn Festschrift)Rev. John Frahmhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11937327450254152002noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329600504016968888.post-2965712632701917062015-09-08T08:32:04.931-05:002015-09-08T08:32:04.931-05:00"When Rome surrenders its vocabulary and begi...<i>"When Rome surrenders its vocabulary and begins to speak in the language of the world (social justice, fairness, sincerity, love, affection, etc.) the whole issue is lost in a maze of terms foreign to the Scriptures and to our own unique history as the Church."</i> <br /><br />That is what Luther and the Lutheran Confessions charged against the Romanists in the 16th century. Nothing appears to have changed on that side of the Tiber.<br /><br /><i>"Lutherans are in the same predicament. When we begin speaking like evangelicals or when we abandon the unique vocabulary and language we learned from the Scriptures and honed through years of council, creed, and confession, we have surrendered the argument and the authority to those who begin at another point."</i><br /><br />The rest of the article repeats this theme numerous times. Are there any specific examples? <br /><br />Certainly they should not include Rome's worldly and antiScriptural vocabulary and language denounced in the Lutheran Confessions, which would mean jumping from the Evangelical ditch on one side to the Romanist ditch on the other.Carl Vehsehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00348831096001668813noreply@blogger.com